Fairford
by jimmygreen2002
Summary: The Zombie Horde reaches RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire. (Story an old one, not related to STONEFERRY or up-coming DRYPOOL)
1. Chapter 1

**Extract from debriefing of Colour Sergeant Sean Murphy – formerly attached to British Army SAS Regiment – given to Canadian military post-war.**  
 **[Part 1]**

There were over eighty of us that came back to the UK on the flight from Afghanistan. It was four days after the outbreak and we didn't know much about what was going on. There were squaddies attached to line regiments on the flight, Royal Marines, and members of small special forces teams like me aboard.  
We landed at RAF Fairford, which was near Gloucester, and our transport aircraft soon left (this was before the enforced NATO transport quarantine). The squaddies and the Royal Marines went off – to blocking positions along the M4 motorway, so I heard – but we were to stay behind.  
There were four of us in my patrol team: three other commandoes and I. Our mission was to aid in the defence of the huge airbase in the Gloucestershire countryside so that it would be used as a transport base for military operations in western England. Jets were still flying from Fairford then, as well as many helicopters. The airbase was a communications point for shuttling troops towards the so-called 'front-lines' as well as evacuating non-combatants out to Wales or up north.  
Fairford was an American base in the UK. During the Cold War, it had been a staging post for B-52 bombers should conflict break out. It was used for the same purposes – American bombers flying over Europe during the post Cold War period – and was a large facility. Air-shows were held there too. Because of the latter, there was plenty of civilian transportation links to Fairford. It may have been out in the middle of the countryside, but it was close to the road network. In addition, civilians knew of it any many tried to head towards this 'safe' location when the panic hit.  
Evacuating ordinary civilians wasn't what the military had in mind for Fairford at that point though.  
The non-combatants who were being evacuated from Fairford were VIP's. These weren't people whose faces or names I would recognise, but they were apparently important. These VIP's had family too, as well as personal possessions. I'm talking about civil servants, politicians, scientists, as well as many rich people with connections to the great and good. They were all being shuttled through Fairford in the hundreds and sent out of harm's way. Don't get me wrong, these were people who couldn't fight, but it grinded me that these type of people were getting priority over everyone else. Ordinary civilians were getting turned away at the gates to Fairford so that these VIP's and their families could be saved from the apparent flesh-eating zombies that I had yet to see with my own eyes.  
We had orders to ignore all of this. It wasn't our business. The base needed defending and matters such as that, I was told, weren't for me to dwell on.  
As I said, Fairford was huge. With that long main runaway, all those taxiways, dispersal areas, the terminals, the maintenance buildings, the hangars… it was just huge. Fences topped with barbed- wire, and an anti-vehicle ditch, surrounded it almost all of the way around its perimeter apart from the main gate and two second entrances/exits. In an 'ordinary' situation, a small mobile force of armed men could defend this location against intruders and saboteurs. Anyone trying to sneak in would have to cross the razor wire fence and then avoid getting illuminated by spotlights before the armed guards reacted.

Two understrength companies of TA reservists were the guards at Fairford when we arrived, and they constituted a strong enough force to defeat a conventional threat to the airbase. My team – the four of us commandoes – were meant to back them up. Faced with sneaky saboteurs trying to blow up parked aircraft was what we could easily defeat, but that wasn't the threat.  
Many people couldn't understand this. Maybe… I'll admit this… I didn't too. I was a highly-trained soldier, but a soldier nonetheless. Just like everyone else in Britain who wore their country's uniform, we trained for combat in the 'normal' way. The enemy was to be engaged before it reached us with air and artillery support to strike at its communications and logistics points. They would be hit by long-range attack to slow them down and above all demoralise them. Then, we would engage them for a covered position to hit their leaders. Only when they came close, would the enemy be engaged with shots to wound and against their body mass: the torso. That's how you fight.  
But none of this works with a zombie. He has no communications or logistics. He has no morale or a leader. Shooting the guy next to him in the leg or the abdomen wouldn't stop him because that isn't his comrade that he'll stop to help.  
We didn't know how to fight zombies.  
They weren't following leaders, they had no weaknesses to be exploited in their rear and they just wouldn't stop when one of their number went down. Soldiers like us had never gone up against a horde of fearless attackers before and we just weren't really – mentally or equipment-wise – for when they struck.  
It was my second day at back in England, the sixth day since it all started when the Battle of Fairford begun.


	2. Chapter 2

**Extract from debriefing of Colour Sergeant Sean Murphy – formerly attached to British Army SAS Regiment – given to Canadian military post-war.**  
 **[Part 2]**

We had fifteen minutes warning of the approaching herd. Wing Commander Curtis (the RAF commander on-site) said that the Zombies would arrive in forty-five minutes, maybe an hour, but he was wrong. This was still early on in the first outbreak before people understood just how fast everything could turn to ****.  
They came up the road towards the gate. An inbound convoy of buses had been attacked several miles away and they were the ones who gave the initial report that Fairford was about to face a strike.  
The gates were at once closed and the whole base went on alert. My team and I moved into position where Curtis wanted us – not where we wanted to be, but he was an airman not a soldier – and everyone else started getting ready. The TA soldiers were sent to cover the front gate and the non-combat personnel were all moved away from there. We were up high, atop a maintenance building, with a good view of this and, more-importantly, what was happening outside the main gate.  
As I said before, many civilians had been denied entry to Fairford. Short of actual violence, they had tried everything to get inside where they believed that they'd be safe. They saw the fences, the armed men and the helicopters flying other people away. The powers that be had decided to keep those hundreds of civilians outside though… which was where many of them stayed.  
Those civilians had come in their own vehicles, but rather than drive away, they stayed outside the gates. The road had previously been cleared, but there were civilians in their cars parked up on either side. Those people just sat in their cars waiting to be let in. I even saw some tents – I kid you not! There were people that had stayed overnight in tents outside the main gate rather than get back into their cars and drive far away. It was insane!  
The screams and shouts from those civilians, covered momentarily by the noise from a helicopter departing at high speed, announced that the 'enemy' was here.  
It was by following and then attacking through the civilians denied entry to Fairford that the Zombie herd found us (in my opinion) and so quickly got here. From where I was, using my binoculars, I saw the slaughter. Words cannot describe the horrors that I witnessed. Everyone has seen pictures, video footage and even with their own eyes what can happen when people are attacked, especially by a herd. I don't need to repeat it now… and nor do I really want to.  
The TA soldiers had set up machine gun positions inside the fence and around the main gate. Their trusty GPMG weapons went to work and the part-time reservist soldiers did their duty. They followed their terrible orders to shoot EVERYONE. Again and again they fired with great effect into the crowd of zombies that had come here from a great distance or just recently been infected. I kept watching: I didn't take my eyes off the sight of such mass death even though I wished to.  
At once, things started to go wrong though. Many of the civilians outside, along with the enemy, moved away from the area covered by the well-placed machine guns. They went left and right away from the road. There was woodland either side and people ran into that to get away from certain death. Some fled, away from the airbase, but others followed the trace of the outer fence. They went looking for a way inside.

That couldn't be allowed though.  
My team was well-armed. We had our standard-issue American M16 assault rifles, but two of my guys – Corporal's Smith and Underwood – had sniper rifles too. They both carried L115 models, which were fearsomely-accurate weapons. We were to to stop anyone from attacking the fence and were prepared to shoot at them as per our orders. One person, even five people, couldn't get across or through the fence though, no matter how determined they were.  
No one, not even me (I admit) had thought that someone might crash a car into the fence about a quarter of a mile away from the main gate though. Yes, the anti-vehicle ditch stopped its forward progress – and trapped its presumably terrified, fleeing passengers inside to be soon savaged to death – but a gap had been forced in the fence.  
The enemy, those Zombies, were right behind that car. They went for the people inside, and also what lay beyond. Smith and Underwood started firing at once, and I got on the radio to call for on the ground back-up, but a hole had been opened up in Fairford's outer defences.


	3. Chapter 3

**Extract from debriefing of Colour Sergeant Sean Murphy – formerly attached to British Army SAS Regiment – given to Canadian military post-war.**  
 **[Part 3]**

I'd seen just what a shot from the L115 can do back in Afghanistan – especially at short ranges. Smith and Underwood didn't need me and Private Jones (the fourth member of my team) to call out targets for them because we were only four hundred yards from the hole in the fence in an elevated position.  
Each Corporal fired single shots into those that got through the fence with stunning efficiency. Point Three Three Eight Calibre rounds thundered away at their targets and when the hollow-point bullets impacted, those hit were thrown backwards and put down.  
More Zombies kept coming through the fence though.  
I at once tried to get the TA guys on the radio, but they weren't answering my calls: they were too busy dealing with those outside the main gate. Wing Commander Curtis wouldn't answer the radio either! We had enough ammunition and the correct position to stop penetration of Fairford's defences, though I still wanted back-up just in case things went wrong. I remember the foreboding fear forming inside me that this wasn't going to work all afternoon. And I was soon proved correct too.  
Smith's gun jammed. He didn't know why, nor did Jones or I. The rifle just suddenly wouldn't fire. The L115 isn't prone to jamming so we were all at a loss as to why that had happened. Underwood had many five-round magazines at-hand, but every time there was a delay in him reloading, more targets got through the hole in the fence and further inside Fairford. No longer was he engaging them at the fence, now he was picking them off far inside… while more came towards the hole.  
I recall taking my eyes off the shooting. I looked down at the flight-line where the aircraft and helicopters were. There were civilians there – those VIP's who were ever-so eager to get the hell away – along with RAF personnel. The latter had their own weapons (pistols and a few SA80 assault rifles), but those few armed men didn't instil confidence in me. They weren't forming up a protective line or doing anything else useful. No, instead, they were all pushing the civilians out of the way as they tried to get aboard the parked aircraft and helicopters.  
Underwood kept firing, dropping targets all over the place, but we were eventually going to run out of ammunition. There was more with our kit, which I could have sent Smith and Jones to get, but I didn't want to split us four up seeing the panic below.  
I couldn't decide what to do. I messed up by doing nothing.

One of the helicopters – a RAF Puma transport model – was the first to lift off. I heard the roar of its engines and looked across at it. The Puma can usually take sixteen passengers with three crew, but there must have been thirty, maybe forty people aboard. They were hanging out the doors!  
Gunfire then erupted around a parked Boeing as the Puma flew away north, but I took my eyes off the flight-line and back to the 'action'. Zombies were now less than two hundred yards away from us. Underwood had dropped so many of them, but more were coming. I assumed (correctly with hindsight) that the noise from the car's alarm, which had started going off after the crash, was attracting them. So many were coming through the fence and Underwood was struggling with so many targets.  
Jones and Smith were now kneeing and firing with their M16's (the faulty L115 had been discarded) and so were helping Underwood, but the M16 wasn't nowhere near as good a sniper rifle. Bullets from those weapons wouldn't be as carefully aimed nor have the stopping power. Underwood was taking head shots, but my other two guys were aiming for the body mass of their targets.  
One of the enemy got beyond all of us. I took a shot at her (she was a blood-drenched blonde teenage girl in a hoodie and trainers) with my own weapon just before she dropped out of sight, but missed too. She'd reached the dead-zone below us and went along the side of the building towards the flight-line. Smith got up and ran along the edge of the roof to fire directly down upon her and I started to call out to him as he did so. It had been raining the night before and the surface was wet where we were. I was going to tell him to be careful, but he slipped and went over the edge before I could get my words out.  
It was a twenty foot drop and he didn't have his helmet on.  
Jones went at once to look over the edge to see what had happened to his buddy (they were close), though I stayed with Underwood firing at more and more of the enemy coming towards us and the flight-line too. Fairford was being overrun, I knew that, but I wanted to keep firing at the enemy while my mind tried to work out what the hell we were going to do to rectify the situation.  
Just as I had feared, everything had gone wrong.


	4. Chapter 4

**Extract from debriefing of Colour Sergeant Sean Murphy – formerly attached to British Army SAS Regiment – given to Canadian military post-war.**  
 **[Part 4]**

We'd lost. The whole of RAF Fairford was about to fall to the enemy, those Zombie hordes that I had little understanding of at that point.  
Too many of them were flooding through the gap in the fence and were spreading in every direction before we could kill them. The TA soldiers at the main gate were still there and were refusing to take my calls on the radio. Wing Commander Curtis, the man in-charge, was also unavailable on the radio and he was the only one with the authority to change things. There was gunfire still all around the flight-line where the aircraft and helicopters were lined up – they and the civilians around them were all lost. Smith was (presumably) dead and Jones wasn't listening to my demands for him to get back into firing position: the stupid ******* was opening the roof-hatch to the building below us so that he could go after his pal.  
With all this in mind, I made my decision: we had lost and it was time to save what I could.  
I told Underwood to stop firing and that I had decided we were going to leave. All order had collapsed and Fairford was lost. We'd very soon be trapped on this rooftop and face death. The surrounding fence, I explained when he questioned my reasoning, would soon become a death trap. It was there to keep people out, but would soon be keeping people like us inside to face death.  
We had to get out and continue the fight somewhere that we could make a difference.  
Instead of going down into the maintenance building below, where I reckoned at least several of the wholly fearless enemy were already inside by now, Underwood and I walked over to the south side of the roof. There was a truck parked there: one with a canvas roof that would provide a soft landing for us when we jumped. I hadn't seen any enemy go that way yet and we both had our M16's. We couldn't take on hundreds of the enemy, but we could handle a few.  
We were off that roof and away from the truck as soon as possible. Underwood was as resigned to leaving as I was by that point and he followed my lead with no more questions. It was he who suggested that we go across to the far side of the airbase where there was an access point to escape the confines of the perimeter fence.  
Underwood was a bright fellow, God rest his soul.

The thought of taking a vehicle had been dismissed also the instant I'd had it. We would have been able to move quickly, but the enemy were seemingly attracted to noise and movement – that was a suspicion of mine confirmed post-Fairford. We ran instead and hoped that the Zombies pouring into Fairford wouldn't take as much notice of us compared to all the other running people about.  
I didn't like running away. I had convinced myself of the need to do so, but I still wasn't happy doing it. I had no choice though.  
The enemy was now among those people on the flight-line. There were armed RAF personnel who chose to stand and fight, and others who ran away. It was chaos because of all the unarmed civilians alongside them who decided to do one or the other too. Underwood and I both stayed away – how could we have realistically helped out there?  
It was a long run to the gate that Underwood had spotted. We both had out combat backpacks with us (their supplies meant that we HAD to take them or we'd soon be dead) and it was a warm day despite the time of year. I was drenched in sweat as I ran but we couldn't stop. Two enemy had to be put down to allow us to reach that gate. I took head shots against both, firing three-round tactical bursts, and then they were no more trouble. How to kill the enemy was something that I had now learnt, but I knew that other soldiers at other places were still fighting the enemy the old-fashioned way. Hits to the torso or the limbs didn't stop a Zombie, but, thankfully, a head-shot did.  
Once we reached the gate, Underwood and I came to a stop. We had to get through it… while there were enemy closing up on us from the rear.


	5. Chapter 5

**Extract from debriefing of Colour Sergeant Sean Murphy – formerly attached to British Army SAS Regiment – given to Canadian military post-war.**  
 **[Part 5]**

People ask me why I call them 'the enemy'. Saying 'Zombie' is a word that I am uncomfortable with. And… I rather not call them 'people' either. That's what they were though. They WERE people.  
I shot one seventy-six people between that first engagement at RAF Fairford and getting on the plane from Ireland here to Canada. On Hundred and seventy-six!  
Try to imagine how that feels.  
I used my M16 assault rifle and then a standard-issue SA80 to take the lives of seventy-six enemy targets. They were dead already, but it didn't seem that way at the time because the people I killed were running, walking and crawling towards me at different times in vastly different places.  
I had to kill my comrade-in-arms Underwood when we were in Wales.  
There was a kid aged no more than three who was trying to kill me so I killed him first.  
I shot a person in a wheelchair outside a hospital near Bristol. I could laugh at that… but I won't. That Zombie on wheels was truly scary.  
You think as a soldier that you're only ever going to fight young men your own age, but it was civilians that were the enemy when I escaped from the UK. Young, middle-aged and old men and women. So many kids too. I shot and killed them all so I could live.


End file.
